5 Companies Apply for Bulgaria's New NPP Unit Project

5 companies have submitted documents to develop a project for the new Unit 7 of Bulgaria's Kozloduy NPP, announced the plant's CEO Valentin Nikolov.

Those are US company Westinghouse (part of the Toshiba corporation), French Areva, Areva in a consortium with Mistubishi, Bulgarian company Risk Engineering and Australian Worley Parsons.

Worley Parsons were commissioned as architects and engineers of the scrapped project for a second Bulgarian NPP, the Belene NPP project.

The companies have submitted their offers for technical and economic assesment of Kozloduy NPP Unit 7 in mid-July but have been asked to improve theiri bids, said Nikolov.

According to the NPP CEO, expectations are that the value of the assessment will e about BGN 1 M, with independent experts giving much larger estimates.

"We will be very careful with our choice of company, in order to avoid errors like those that were committed with the Belene NPP," said Nikolov.

The initial assesment must be ready some 7-9 months after concluding the contract; by the end of 2013 the company must chose the site for the new Unit 7.

Nikolov also added that in September, Kozloduy NPP will launch an environmental impact assessment for its planned Unit 7.